‘We shall expect you here to dinner by four,’ wrote her father. ‘The great grubbery will be in nice order for you, as well as the little; both have lately had many accessions of new books. The ink is good, good pens in plenty, and the most pleasant and smooth paper in the world! ‘“Come, Rosalind, oh, come and see What quires are in store for thee!”’ Are we wrong in thinking that these words express Dr. Burney’s anxiety to see his daughter once more working as she had not worked since the last sheet of ‘Cecilia’ was corrected for the press? In the succeeding pages of the Diary we find more than one passage where the good man’s eagerness for some new fruit of her talents is plainly confessed. Friends had united to persuade him that he had but to recall her from the royal dressing-room to her study, and fresh laurels, with abundant riches, would surely and speedily be hers. He was naturally impatient for some fulfilment of these prophecies. Rosalind appeared: she wore out the quills, and covered the quires; but nothing came of her activity. Her health was now fairly restored, and, in the first ardour of composition, she felt that she could employ two pens almost incessantly. Unhappily, her industry was devoted to a mistaken purpose. She had brought with her from Windsor the rough drafts of two tragedies, and without pausing to correct these, she occupied herself in writing a third. A less hopeful enterprise could not have been conceived. She had before her eyes the warning example of Mr. Crisp’s failure. Had this old friend been living, he would doubtless have been wiser for his pupil than he was for himself. It is certain that Nature had not designed the Siddons for tragedy more distinctly than she intended Frances Burney for comedy. With the exception of one or two powerful scenes, such as the death of Harrel, Fanny’s chief successes had been won in the department of humorous writing. It was her misfortune that she had at this moment no literary adviser on whose judgment she could rely. Her acquaintance with Arthur Murphy seems to have ceased; the Hastings trial, and the debates on the Regency, had cooled her relations with Sheridan and Burke. ‘Mr. Sheridan,’ she wrote, ‘I have no longer any ambition to be noticed by.’ Her regard for Burke continued; but she had not yet met him since her deliverance from captivity. Dr. Burney was told only that she was engaged upon a play, and was made to understand that he must wait until it was finished before he was indulged with a sight of the manuscript. Towards the end of 1791 she writes: ‘I go on with various writings, at different times, and just as the humour strikes. I have promised my dear father a Christmas-box and a New Year’s gift; and therefore he now kindly leaves me to my own devices.’ We do not find that the anxious parent received either of the promised presents. The daughter’s fit of application seems to have soon died away: in the early